Shifter
by Mana-Garmr
Summary: CHAPTER 1 REVISED! Extremely AU shapeshifter story. Focuses mainly around Reno. Axel does put in some appearances, but not many so I changed my mind about listing it as a crossover. Will eventually have yaoi, mpreg. Individual chapter warnings inside.
1. Prologue Strays

**Warnings:** Surprisingly, nothing…

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Prologue – Strays

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Year 256

Two pairs of bright eyes stared out at the bustling streets of Traverse Town. Their owners, huddled together in the rain, were mostly overlooked, hidden as they were amidst a jumble of empty crates. Shivering, cold, and hungry, the pair of fox kits didn't stir from their hiding place until late in the day, when dusk began to fall and the streets slowly emptied, leaving them alone in the silence.

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For weeks, the kits scavenged the streets of Traverse Town. They survived by eating scraps found in alleys and by drinking rain water collected in puddles, never seeking food by day for fear of being seen and caught. The Seekers had disappeared after killing their mother, but there was never any telling when a Sweep might move through the town, gathering up every stray Shifter and either slaughtering them for being "sub-human" or selling them into captivity. The Seekers wouldn't care that the two kits were merely children, too young to have even made their first Shift into human form yet; it hadn't saved their siblings, and it wouldn't save them.

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Three Months Later…

Dawn broke slowly over the town, the sun's first rays slowly burning off a light fog that had enveloped the streets during the pre-dawn hours. Barely hidden by the disappearing haze, the fox kits scrambled fearfully towards their latest hiding place; they had stayed out too long in the night, and a squad of Seekers was moving through the town. Shouts rang out behind them, heralding the approach of the team, conducting a cleverly-timed Sweep. They were getting closer.

Panicking, the kits picked up the pace in their mad dash towards safety. Their usual spot was too far away; they would have to find cover elsewhere, and quickly – they didn't have much time before the Sweep caught up with them.

The first opportunity to hide actually came in the form of two separate locations: a set of rotting wooden stairs that led into an abandoned café, and a crack in the wall of the same building, just wide enough for a kit to squeeze into and just deep enough to be heavily shadowed. The crack was by far the better hiding place of the two; the steps were rotted to the point that there were many gaps in them, and they couldn't have been considered a hiding place at all were it not for the last remnants of mist that still clung to the streets.

Skidding to a quick halt, the smaller of the two kits forcibly shoved his larger brother into the crack, snapping at his heels when he hesitated and tried to move towards the steps; there wasn't time to argue about who would take the inferior hiding spot. Casting one last frightened glance down the street, the smaller kit leaped for the safety of the steps, taking cover just in time.

The group of men that rounded the corner looked no different than the hundreds of people who roamed Traverse Town's streets by day. They wore normal clothes, were mostly clean-shaven, and didn't have haircuts any stranger than anyone else's (although that admittedly wasn't saying much). What marked them as different was the cold, calculating gleam in every one of their eyes. These men were here to take lives – be it by murder or by slavery – and that fact didn't particularly bother them, so long as they got paid.

They walked quickly down the street, their casual air belying their rapid pace. They had seen a fox wandering the streets, and every one of them knew how rare a fox Shifter was, and what kind of money a kit would bring at the Breeder's Market. None of them intended to let their quarry escape.

Their eyes scanned from side to side, missing nothing in their relentless search. When one of them spotted a crack in the wall of a building, just large enough for a small animal to hide in, they all zeroed in on it like bloodhounds. Under the stairs, the smaller kit shook with fear, blue eyes gleaming in the dim light. The Seekers never once glanced at his hiding place, so intent were they on the hole in the wall. If they got too much closer, not even the dim light and heavy shadows would keep his brother hidden from them.

The Seekers fanned out as they approached, ensuring that if the kit was hiding in the wall, it would not be able to escape. One of them neared the wooden steps, and the kit's trembling stilled, his eyes darting between the man and the wall. Only a few more steps, and his brother would be discovered; the hole was supposed to have been the better hiding spot!

The man stopped at the corner of the steps and began to crouch down to peer into the hole. The kit under the steps acted without thinking, desperate to protect his brother. Acting as though the man's approach had frightened him into fleeing, he shot out from under the steps with a loud yelp, dancing briefly around the man's feet before shooting off down the street and away from the café, all eyes immediately riveted on him. He ran as fast as he could, hoping to draw them away from his brother and into the nearby market, which was just opening for the day and where he would hopefully be able to lose them. He wasn't counting on one of them carrying a cast net.

The weighted net settled over him like a blanket and he quickly became tangled, crashing to the ground. If he'd had more time, he probably would have been able to detangle himself and wiggle out from under it, but its purpose was to detain him, not capture him, and it worked admirably. The Seekers were on him in a moment, scooping him up net and all. He wriggled and thrashed futilely, and they laughed as they carried him away, uncaring of his fear and amused by his laughable attempts at escape. They walked back the way they'd come, passing by the café without even giving it a glance. His squirming had wound up with him tucked under the arm of the man carrying him, nose poking out of the net and ears squashed flat by the nylon cords. He was facing backwards, however, and the last thing he saw before being hauled around the corner was his brother's face peeking out of the hole, ears drooping and green eyes gleaming with despair. Then he was gone.

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**A/N:**

I usually picture Reno as being the older of the two, but I always picture Axel as being taller anyway. Don't know why…

Fox kits usually have blue eyes when they're very young, and then they turn brown as they get older. Shifters can have whatever color eyes I feel like them having :p

People were probably expecting the next installation of Fallen, or the first part of Rude's story, but I've been wanting to start Shifter off for a while now… I do have an outline for Rude's prologue, but thus far putting it into paragraph form hasn't been working out very well :p And I haven't really even looked at starting Axel's first chapter in Fallen… Right now I only have a vague storyline for his childhood, so that might take longer than expected to churn out.

The year in this story has nothing to do with anything… I just made one up so that it'll be easier to understand the continuity of the chapters.


	2. Ch 1 Breeder

**THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN COMPLETELY REWRITTEN!** So for all of those who might be watching, please don't be confused that you're seeing Chapter 1 "again" - it's really different from the original, so please read through it if you have the time :)

**Warnings:** mpreg, technically noncon and underage stuff

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Chapter One – Breeder

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The Breeder's Market sprawled over four square miles of land, a massive complex of packed dirt and old wooden buildings, dirty and built low to the ground. The Market catered to many kinds of buyers; it sold Shifters of varying breeds and purity of bloodlines. There was even a section of the Market foe pure- and half-breeds, although this area was very small, since most Shifters of that quality were bred and sold in exclusive circles of society. The stock at the Breeder's Market was primarily the lesser-liked breeds: mice, rabbits, some of the common dog breeds, and the like.

With most breeds one would have to blood tests to determine the purity of their bloodlines. Foxes were a rarity in that you could always tell their purity by their color – the brighter toe color red, the purer the blood. The fox kit, a deep, pure red, was very obviously a pure-blood. Normally such a rare and exotic Shifter – particularly a juvenile – would be taken straight to an exclusive market; the price for a kit like him numbered well in the tens of thousands of gil. The Seekers who brought him in, however, had no affiliations with the upper circles, no contacts to sell the kit to. As a result, he was brought here, to the squalid filth of the common Breeder's Market.

Despite the usual low fare sold at the Market, the auctioneers knew gold when they saw it, and they endeavored to get as much money out of the kit as possible. It wouldn't be as much as the exclusive traders would have gotten, but the kit would still bring in more money than any five other Shifters the Market sold. With this in mind, they ordered every blood test possible for the young fox – tests for diseases, fertility, and any genetic rarity they could think of. They discovered as a result of the tests that he was even rarer than they'd thought: he was a male Carrier, capable of bearing his own children; and he was a double-Shifter, thought to be the rarest genetic mutation that existed in any of the Shifter species. It was actually a bit of a misnomer, since all Shifters were capable of assuming a second – human – form. It meant that he could Shift into another animal form besides that of the fox, some breed of domestic canine according to the test. The auctioneers were actually privately disappointed when they received the results of the blood test, since the kit had been brought in alone; the ability to double-Shift tended to skip many generations, but the gene was carried on the female chromosome, and so when it appeared in one kit out of a litter it tended to appear in most of the others too, either as an affected male or as a carrying female. It was fortunate that the kit they had was a Carrier and would pass on X-chromosomes to any female offspring, but being able to sell a lot of the rare fox kits would have been even better.

The other test results were far less exciting. The kit was indeed a pure-blood, but they'd already guessed that. He had heartworms, which were easily fixed with some pills. He had a fungal infection under his toenails, which was fixed by some more pills and an anti-fungal foot bath. Finally, he had a minor cold, which was fixed not by a pill, but by a syringe full of liquid medicine squirted down the back of his throat three times a day. By the end of his first week being held at the Market, he was healthy and clean, and ready to be sold off to the highest bidder.

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His first owner paid 7 750gil for him. He was known on the streets as Don Corneo, a fat-assed street boss who thought higher of himself than anyone else did and who cared more for his harem of pretty women than for the Breeding Farm that he owned. The farm was only there to fund his women and drugs, and he left it solely in the hands of one of his henchmen, Oscha.

Oscha recognized the kit's value as soon as he saw the little fox on the auction block, and spent the money on him that he was _supposed_ to spend on two relatively healthy and somewhat good-looking cats that were already of breeding age. Corneo was out of town for two weeks, giving Oscha the time to settle the kit in and give him a name – Reno, because his brightly-colored fur was flashy, and it was a name that would easily gain recognition and, more importantly, reputation. For those two weeks, Reno was well-fed, well-groomed, and well-treated. Then Corneo returned, and everything changed.

Corneo didn't want a fox kit that was less than a year old. Shifters aged at the same rate as humans; he would have to wait over a decade before the kit was worth it. He had women to clothe and feed, and a drug trade to maintain. He couldn't afford to wait for some damned infant to grow up, no matter how much the kit would eventually be worth. Oscha was searching the market for a buyer before the day was through.

His living conditions degraded quickly after that first sale. He was bought by owners who heard "pure-bred" or "male Carrier" or "double-Shifter" and who threw down the money then and there, without asking about things like age. He was sold by those same people, who couldn't afford to take care of such a young Shifter who wasn't making them money in return; each time he was sold, his price and living conditions decreased considerably. By the time he was four, he was living in a barren cage just large enough to hold himself and a food dish; his water was dispensed from a bottle hung on the side of the cage, similar to the water bottles used in rabbit cages. He was only taken out to exercise four times a day, and he was forced to wait for those times to relieve himself; his cage was only cleaned once a week and he spent several weeks forced to lie in his own filth before he learned to restrain himself.

At only four years old, Reno had the manners and the attention span of a human toddler, and it took him even longer to learn the rules of his latest home. During three of his four daily excursions, he was dragged along on a leash in a poor attempt to teach him to obey and to keep him in a "formal" exercise regimen. His noon outing, however, was "free" time – or at least as free as his handlers would allow.

It was his natural inclination to play when he wasn't in a cage or on a leash. He was an exuberant youngster despite his poor living conditions, and when a grasshopper bounded past him, or a butterfly's brightly-colored wings caught his eye, he gave chase automatically. When the sun beat down on the compound, the ground dried out, and the dust the he kicked up made his nose burn and his chest ache. On the other hand, the sun warmed the grass marvelously, and he couldn't stop himself from romping over and rolling in it almost as soon as he was let out. When the sun was too much for him, he bounced over to the scant shade offered by the eaves of the buildings, flopping down unceremoniously to rest. And when he caught a new scent in the compound and the trail led outside, he thought nothing of trailing his way over to the perimeter, ears perked and nose to the ground.

Unfortunately for him, he wasn't supposed to chase after the insects, or set a single paw on the grass. He wasn't supposed to go into the shade near the buildings, even if he _was_ tired and hot, and most importantly, the perimeter fence was never, _ever_ to be approached, no matter _how_ interesting the scent he was following might be. The punishments for such infractions were severe, and ranged from sharp kicks and beatings to days of starvation, depending on the moods of his handlers.

Over time, the punishments took their toll and Reno learned. He lost a great deal of his enthusiasm for those midday outings, and he stepped carefully, always keeping a wary eye on his handler lest he inadvertently break a rule that he wasn't yet aware of. The safest way to avoid punishments, he discovered, was to stick to walking in quiet circles. Eventually, he even forgot what it was like to run or chase scents around the compound, and his eyes became as dull as his ragged coat now appeared.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this master was his last one for a long while, and he was eight before life changed for him yet again. Although Shifters shared many human characteristics, being in constant heat was not one of them. They went into heat in the same manner as the animal that they represented, although they still had to wait a "human" amount of time to reach sexual maturity. Although Reno was technically a double-Shifter, his ability to shift into another form – his canine form _or_ his human form – wouldn't develop until he reached sexual maturity, and so his estrous cycle was patterned after that of a fox, meaning that once he finally matured he would only go into heat once a year… if his master allowed things to run their natural course. It was around this time, however, that letting Shifters mature naturally was no longer a requirement that their owners had to endure.

There was a new drug on the market that could be used to induce heat in Breeders – whether they were of age or not.

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Year 264

Reno's first mating was to a stocky Rottweiler, built for brawling as a pit fighter but not particularly agile. Foxes were known for being agile and fast, and so the Rottweiler's owners hoped to produce pups with the brute strength of their father and the nimbleness of their 'mother.' Regrettably, Reno's master didn't seem to realize that a pregnant Shifter needed as much care and attention as any pregnant human, and his living conditions didn't improve at all. He was no longer given a free block of time to exercise; instead, he was let out of his cage briefly to relieve himself, and then returned to its confines immediately. More importantly, his food allotment wasn't increased, and by the end of his seven-week term – several days shorter than it should have been – every rib and hollow of bone was on prominent display beneath his matted fur. He had a litter of five kits, all stillborn.

Reno only went into heat three more times after that. The second heat was once again chemically induced, as soon as his owner decided that his body was recovered from giving birth. His level of malnutrition ensured that he was in no condition to carry again so soon, if ever, and he miscarried after only two weeks. His third pregnancy, induced only half a year later, bore the same results. They gave up on the chemicals after that, and his fourth and final estrous period didn't appear for two more years, around the time when he should have been having his _first_ heat and making his initial Shifts into his other forms.

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Year 267

The dog they brought in to mate with Reno was yet another stocky pit fighter, one of the "Fighting Dogs of Córdoba." This particular breed was known for its viciousness in both pit fighting and in mating, and the dog in question, a scarred fighter named Rattle, lived up to the breed's reputation; he was snarling at Reno before he was even released into the pen. Although foxes lack the required facial muscles to bare their teeth in a snarl, Reno still let out a low growl when Rattle entered the pen.

He was tired of being snapped at by ill-mannered dogs, tired of not being fed enough, tired of always feeling ill and weak. He didn't want to mate with another fighting dog, and certainly not with one who was so obviously aggressive towards him. He wasn't fed enough to carry a pregnancy to term, and it hurt him both physically and emotionally to lose his kits. This time, he wasn't going to stand for it; his handlers had apparently forgotten that his natural ability to go into heat also coincided with his ability to Shift, and none of them really knew what to think when Reno began changing in front of their eyes, his muscles solidifying and growing beneath a pelt that was rapidly changing in both color and texture. Had any of them realized what was happening, they would have tried to grab Rattle with the snare-pole and drag him out of the pen. As it was, they simply stood there in dumbfounded silence while Rattle, taking the changes as a sign to attack instead of a sign to be careful, leaped forward with bared teeth.

Reno lunged forward at the same time, completing his Shift and letting loose a throaty battle roar as he closed the distance on his counterpart. He had no experience in a fighting pit so he relied on speed and sheer momentum to tear into his opponent. Rattle, for his part, was not used to fighting opponents with so much agility, and he stood little chance against Reno's rage, despite his years of experience and larger size. By the time the handlers came to their senses and pulled Reno off with the snare-pole, Rattle was a bloody mess of fur and torn muscle, quivering on the ground. His handler only had to look at him to know he would never fight again; a bullet later and the beaten Shifter was out of his misery.

Fortunately for the beleaguered handlers, once they'd dragged him out of sight of his fallen adversary, Reno calmed down and they had the opportunity to actually look and see what he'd become.

Before them stood a fully-grown red nose pitbull. He stood nearly two feet tall at the shoulder, and when they hauled him onto a scale later they determined that he weighed upwards of seventy pounds – most of which was muscle. His eyes remained their usual clear blue, and he had white markings in similar sizes and locations to his fox form. Unlike his fox form, he wasn't in heat.

It didn't take long for Reno's owner to decide that he was no longer suitable for breeding. His history of stillbirths and miscarriages made it unlikely that he would be a viable Carrier in the future, and his aggression during the session with Rattle made it dangerous to try mating him again anyway. Thankful that he'd bought the Shifter at such a low price, Reno's master had no trouble with selling him. Now that he had finally matured, the man could make a profit off of him anyway. Angry, defensive, and too wary to Shift out of his pitbull form, Reno quickly found himself being shipped off again, this time on his way to the pits.

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A/N:

For those who have been watching my stories, you're probably well aware that I've changed this chapter considerably. As a result, you get a much longer Author's Note too :) Unfortunately, this does mean that those of you who reviewed this chapter already won't be able to review it again if you want to.

For those interested, here're some general facts about dog and fox reproductive cycles:

Dogs: estrous (heat) lasts 2-4 weeks, typically occurs twice a year; pregnancy lasts 63 days on average. Breeding is controlled and thus usually monogamous, although feral dogs can be polygamous and are capable of having multiple fathers for one litter.

Foxes: estrous lasts 1-6 days, occurs once a year in the fall or winter, pregnancy lasts 52 days on average. Breeding is typically monogamous, although males might mate with multiple females.

I tried to keep as much of the information about the animals in this story as factual as possible (including foxes not being able to snarl). Although this doesn't show up in this chapter, I'd also like to point out that foxes do actually purr too :p Add that to their slit-pupil eyes, and they're not known as the feline canine for nothing, hehe.

As for dog breeds, here are some red nose pit bull photos (remove the spaces from all of the following links to see them):

http:// www. caragankennel. com/ magnum_morp_

http:// www. caragankennel. com/ images/ Dogs/ Magnum/ magnumjune28_05_

And here is a Córdoba Fighting Dog photo and some info:

http:// www. redorbit. com/ modules/ reflib/ article_images/ 45_

http:// www. thedogpark. com/ articles/ dog-breeds/ pit-bull-breeds/

The Córdoban dogs are actually extinct now, but they're one of the ancestors to the Dogo Argentino, which is the dog breed I was originally going to substitute for Rattle's breed. The Córdobans fit so much better though, since they were known for frequently attacking and even killing their mates rather than reproducing.

While I'm on the topic of fighting dog breeds, I don't support dog fighting, and I don't support the opinion that pitbulls are vicious animals – I have known many very friendly pits, and I feel that this is a highly misunderstood breed.

-steps off of soapbox-

Anyway :p If you were hoping for a story about Reno as a cuddly little fox… you'll have to wait a while to see him as a fox again, sorry ;) You will, however, get to finally see him in human form soon. And if you were hoping to see lots of Axel… again, you'll have to wait (but my next few chapters of Fallen feature Axel prominently, if you're interested. He just won't be all cute and furry :p)

**To everyone who reviewed!** Thank you for your reviews everyone; as always, they mean a lot to me, even when I take forever to update something. It's ridiculously late right now for how early I have to be up in the morning (this morning already, actually), so I don't have time to go back through my old reviews like I normally do. I appreciate all of your kind words though, and I'll try to at least update _something_ a little more frequently now; with any luck, now that I've finally made this chapter one that I'm actually happy with, the next update can even be the next chapter for Shifter :) It is, after all, high time I started introducing some of Reno's fighting buddies ;) Look for introductions to Shelke and Cissnei next, and possibly Weiss and some of the Turks!

As usual, feel free to point out grammar/spelling errors, or other crap that just doesn't make sense.


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